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Lot Essay
The name kakubha implies a summit, splendour or beauty, but also the garlands of champaka flowers that hang from this ragini’s hands. She is shown as a heroine deserted by her lover, who wanders dejectedly in an open landscape beneath monsoon clouds.
A closely related ragamala painting, depicting a lone heroine in the forest amidst birds preparing for a lover's tryst, attributed to Bundi or Kota, circa 1770 is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (J.C. Harle and Andrew Topsfield, Indian Art in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1987, fig.16, cat.88, pp.79-80). The Ashmolean painting derives in style from a slightly earlier series of 240 paintings, executed at Kota in 1768, most of which are in the Sarasvati Bhavan Library, Udaipur. Another related illustration of Kakubha Ragini, very similar in composition and style, is in the Cleveland Museum of Art (75.40) and attributed to the Raghogarh School, circa 1780.
A closely related ragamala painting, depicting a lone heroine in the forest amidst birds preparing for a lover's tryst, attributed to Bundi or Kota, circa 1770 is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (J.C. Harle and Andrew Topsfield, Indian Art in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1987, fig.16, cat.88, pp.79-80). The Ashmolean painting derives in style from a slightly earlier series of 240 paintings, executed at Kota in 1768, most of which are in the Sarasvati Bhavan Library, Udaipur. Another related illustration of Kakubha Ragini, very similar in composition and style, is in the Cleveland Museum of Art (75.40) and attributed to the Raghogarh School, circa 1780.